A Reading
July 13, 2000
7:37 a.m.
I went back to an old story this morning. It feels like I'm doing a lot of that lately. Sometimes I do that when I'm trying to avoid something else. But I don't think this situation is a case of avoidance so much as insistence by the story itself. Blame it on the collection of new writers that I mentioned in yesterday's entry. See, their workshop operates under the "read aloud" method. Everyone reads whatever they brought, and then people nod their heads and make whatever comments they want to make. I am a more published writer than any of the others, and sometimes I think they feel a bit intimidated when I read--fair enough, though ... I'm intimidated by other writers, too. Anyway. I read a piece, and about a third of the way through, I was thinking, "wow ... this is hard to read. And, besides that, it's getting boring." When you're getting bored reading your own stuff, you have to figure something is wrong. Then I hit a point just past halfway where I thought, "ok. Now it's coming up to snuff--this is really an interesting part." So I circled the page number and went on. The story ends in pretty dramatic fashion, and I could tell it worked well because of the pregnant pause after it ended--strange how you can tell the difference between a good pregnant pause and a bad pregnant pause. There were lots of complimentary comments. Finally, one woman mentioned that she was getting lost in the middle. I smiled. That's what I needed to hear, after all. Confirmation. I think I would have fixed it anyway. I hope I would have. But the fact that she spoke up has stuck in my craw for the past two days. So, this morning I took a carving knife to the tale and reduced it by over 10%. 6,000 words right down to 5,300. As always (seemingly), the story didn't lose a bit.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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Reading: Harry Potter |
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